“The rules for social media are same, what applies offline also applies online,” shared Milind Deora during his recent Google Hangout. Same has been applied for a BJP activist who has been booked in Jalandhar for his Facebook activities. According to Firstpost, Sandeep Bhalla, claiming to be a BJP activist, was yesterday booked in Jalandhar for allegedly posting an objectionable picture of Congress President Sonia Gandhi on Facebook.

The complaint was filed by RTI activist and local Congress leader Sanjay Sehgal on Monday who had approached the police commissioner online on the matter. Right now the police has registered a case against Sandeep Bhalla under Section 66A of the Information Technology Act.

Besides this Sehgal has filed a case against another BJP activist who has morphed the picture of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi.

“We have filed a complaint to the police regarding the uploading of the picture by Bhalla on Facebook and other such photographs posted by BJP activists. We have also sent a morphed picture of Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi to the police which was uploaded by another BJP activist,”said Sehgal.

The activity has been condemned by BJP state president Kamal Sharma who also clarified that Sandeep is a supporter and not a member of the party. Despite that BJP has asked the Jalandhar district unit to investigate on the matter and find the truth.

Morphing pictures is not that what we support but we are going to see much more news around the 66A in the coming days. With the General Elections of India inching closer, political parties have become quite pro-active on finding out what is being told online by their opponents. Recently we saw Lok Sabha leader of BJP, Sushma Swaraj taking a dig at the Uttarakhand chief minister on Twitter for his incapability of handling the recent crisis. But she also received a strong reply from the Congress ministers such as Manish Tewari and Ajay Mekan.

At the beginning of the year, Chief Minster of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah at The Big Tent event had said that social media will not have an impact on the 2014 elections. Not that I completely agree but one can’t deny that today political parties are monitoring social media for online reputation management. They have missed out two core features of social media – active presence and connecting with the people.